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Transcript

Ten Palestinians die as Israel acknowledges ‘incubator of terror'

AM Archive - Saturday, 22 June , 2002 00:00:00

Reporter: Tim Palmer

TIM PALMER: Israeli Defence Minister, Binyamin Ben Eliezer’s words of a few ago, that Israel’s invasion of the Palestinian territories would only bring a few weeks’ respite from the bombers, have resounded after this week’s attacks on Israelis.

Today he joined in a security cabinet meeting that decided to pursue the same failed strategy once more: go back into the Palestinian territories, only this time for an extended period.

This, despite Mr Ben Eliezer’s statement this week, that such invasions only breed attacks against Israel. Unfortunately, while the army is carrying out these necessary actions, the operation themselves become a hothouse which produces more and more suicide bombers.

Israeli troops were turning up the heat in that incubator today.

Midday in Jenin, the Palestinians hinting that the Israeli curfew has been lifted descend on the bakeries and grocers of the town’s market area. It turns out to be a short-lived fragment of normal life.

Israeli tanks opened fire, two shells fall on the edge of the crowd, and the area is raped my heavy machine-gun fire.

Tanks storm back into the area, cutting down dozens of civilians - hundreds of men, women and children flee in panic.

Three children were killed; two of them aged just 6, as well as 50-year-old man.

First, Israel’s army it was responding to Palestinian gunfire but hours later, but hours later the story changed. The tanks had opened fire in error.

The mistake would be investigated.

Another mistake had happened just hours earlier in Jenin when the army blew up the house of a militia man’s family, a child in a nearby house killed by shrapnel and another 8-year-old boy in Gaza, also killed by Israeli fire.

A pregnant woman shot dead by Israeli soldiers in Kalkilya.

Nevertheless, the army will stay in the West Bank and orders for a further call-up of soldiers are expected to be issued within days.

Though response to this week’s attack against Israelis, the latest when Palestinian gunmen broke into the hard line Jewish settlement of Itamar and shot dead a woman with her three children, as well as another man.

As they were buried today, the Israeli government said that attack was repugnant.

ISRAELI GOVERNMENT SPOKESMAN: It is difficult to understand how any human being can come into a house, kill a mother and three children.

It seems like the Palestinian terrorists have lost any human dignity, and we expect the civilised world to denounce this behaviour.

TIM PALMER: But respect for human dignity is in short supply all around here, Jewish settlers having left that funeral, drove into a neighbouring Arab town, and indiscriminately picked out a young Arab man to shoot dead in reprisal, before torching several of the town’s shops.

President George W. Bush is still waiting for the right moment to make a key speech on the Middle East, a speech few believe contains practical answers in any case and few right moments lie on the horizon.